Friday, April 25, 2008

iPass Helper (Beta)

iPass is a great service allowing free connection to pay wifi hotspots around the world.Unfortunately the iPass client for OSX leaves a lot to be desired:- Often crashes on startup- Always crashes on shutdown- Finding a hotspot is tough - one giant list filtered by city

I can't do much about the first two, but I've written a widget to help with the last.Install the widget from here.

Enter a search into the text field and the widget will match locations and offer to connect to your pick of results.

Searches can be quite flexible, e.g.: SFO Starbucks 18th st Mission

...and you can search by things that are not visible in iPass directly, e.g. street name.

Preferred country, city, area can be set on the back.

I find it best to start the iPass client before using the widget. The widget uses applescript to select the result in the table, which also has problems, especially for selecting items in large lists which is ridiculously slow. Hence the Beta tag for this widget.

Requires: iPass client and service

This widget is not affiliated with iPass inc.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is required. If you're using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you're using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.